How to boost your creativity

                    By Bayo Ogunmupe

     Knowing something and applying it are two different things. That is why it is never too late to start applying what you know about creativity. The aim of education isn't the mere acquisition of knowledge but putting whatever you know to action. Common sense would have us believe we pursue education so that we may gain knowledge. but the truth is knowledge unto itself isn't very useful. You may know many things but still you may fail to apply that knowledge. It is when you apply what you know that your knowledge becomes valuable. 

     The great aim of education is to use what you know to shape your life and impact the lives of others. Putting the education you have gained into action is the e4ssence of education. Which is why when thinking creatively, you will always have room for improvemnt. However, you are unlikely to became a creativie genius like Albert Einstein or Steve Jobs or Mozart without you possessing some natural talent. Surely everybody is creative but in very different  ways and to varying degrees. Our democratic longing to make everyone and everything equal has led us to make creative greatness indistinguishable from creativity being an act of personal expression.

     What our society lacks is the meaningful appreciation of the different levels of creativity  and how we can use them as steps for increasing our own potential for creativity. there are five levels and types of creativity. Starting from the easiest to the most difficult. along with suggestions for building your creative muscle. The first is mimetic creativity. Mimesis is the term passed down to us by the ancient Greeks meaning to imitate or mimic. This is the most rudimentary form of creativity. To improve mimetic creativity, travel to new places and meet new people.

     Then, as move about meeting new people make sure you identify patterns and benchmarks as well as indicators of success or failure so that you have good ideas of what really works and what doesn't and why. Biosociative creativity is the second kind. The term biosociative was coined by the novelist Arthur Koestler in his celebrated book The Art of Creation to describe how our conscious mind, when relaxed, can connect rational with intuitive thoughts to produce moments of eureka. Biosociative creativity occurs when a familiar idea is connected to an unfamiliar one, to produce a novel hybrid. Brainstorming is an excellent example of biosociative creativity. 

     You can find a variety of brainstorming methods  to boost your creativity from the websites of the Creative Education Foundation and the Creative Problem Solving Institute. Three, Analogical Creativity is the next level of creativity. It uses analogies to transfer information that understant in one domain, the source, to help resolve a challenge in an unfamiliar area, the target. In essence analogies are bridges that allow our cognitive processes to transport clusters of information from the unknown to the known and back again. Analogies can also be used to disrupt habit-bound thinking to make way for new ideas.

     You can develop your analogical creativity through the "imaginary friend" role storming method whereby you imagine what someone might say or do if faced with a particular challenge. The fourth level is Narratological creativity. At its essence, narratological creativity is the art of storytelling; the narrator telling the narrative. Our personal stories are perhaps the ultimate use of narratological creativity as we invent and reinvent the story of our life. This way, something that is deeply personal becomes allegorical or of mythic significance. You can boost your narratological creativity by practising the art of storyboarding or by engaging in scenario making to project potential courses of your action.

     Intuitive creativity is the final level of the creative process. It is the most challenging; it has often been peomoted to the realm of spiritual and wisdom traditions. This is where creativity becomes bigger and beyond us. It transcends our individuality. Its sub skills are freeing and emptying the mind- meditation, yoga and chanting to name a few. This is basically to distract and relax the mind to create a flow state of consciousness where ideas come easily.Approaches to intuitive creativity include free writing, also known as automatic writing. As to many learned skills, you have to  practice to master it. Even the geniuses practice all the time.